{"id":18042,"date":"2008-08-29T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rentonnews.us\/news\/theres-much-more-to-the-wasl-story\/"},"modified":"2008-08-29T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-29T18:00:00","slug":"theres-much-more-to-the-wasl-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/letters\/theres-much-more-to-the-wasl-story\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s much more to the WASL story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In reply to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnwlocalnews.com\/south_king\/ren\/opinion\/letters\/27405529.html\">Beatrice Clark\u2019s letter about our \u201cfailing\u201d middle schools<\/a>, it seems to me that she has just listened to sensationalized reports. I can\u2019t speak for Dimmit or Nelson, but here is the information for McKnight. I believe that the following applies to all three schools.<\/p>\n<p>A school\u2019s AYP score is determined by sub-groups in the schools population. Kids are divided out by ethnicity, financial status, age, sex, grade, etc., resulting in 37 subgroups. A child can be in more than one subgroup. If any subgroup fails, the school is flagged as not making AYP. If one group, say poor black males, fails one year, it triggers a flag for the school. Then let\u2019s say the next year they all pass but Hispanic girls fail, the school is again flagged as needing improvement. Specifically at McKnight, the groups who fail frequently are the special education students and the English Language Learners. Yes, a child who has been in the U.S. for less than a week and speaks no English must take the test and their score counts against the schools.<\/p>\n<p>So why don\u2019t schools like Mercer Island or Bainbridge get equally knocked? For a subgroup to count, there must be a statistically significant number of students. Renton\u2019s affordable housing creates a diverse population and we have the two largest middle schools in the state. We have many more statistically significant subgroups than the more \u201caffluent\u201d communities who don\u2019t have to count the scores of their smaller minority populations. This year, McKnight had double-digit increases in its school scores across all portions of the WASL \u2013 one of the highest increases in the state. Not bad for a school not making AYP.<\/p>\n<p>Having been in the school and asking questions, I am very happy to send my kids there. While no system is perfect, I am proud to give Ms. Heuschel and Ms. Maxwell my vote of confidence. I see definite improvements and invite any concerned parent to get into their school and learn \u201cthe rest of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leiana Smith<\/p>\n<p>Renton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In reply to Beatrice Clark\u2019s letter about our \u201cfailing\u201d middle schools, it seems to me that she has just listened to sensationalized reports. I can\u2019t speak for Dimmit or Nelson, but here is the information for McKnight. I believe that the following applies to all three schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18042"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rentonnews.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}